My Home

My Home

Here is a slide show of my home. I still can't figure out what is missing when I paste the code in so I gave up and just posted the link. Some of us in the chat were talking about the space we have. When most people think of NJ they think of the suburbs. I grew up in a NJ suburb near Manhattan. We lived on a 45 x 70 lot including the house. I moved up here when I got married 25 years ago. I live in the extreme west of NJ near PA. My school where I work is on the Delaware River. The township where I live now requires 3 acres per house. One acre is a lot to take care of. I used to have a garden but my soil is very poor. Most of my yard is grass that has to be mowed with a tractor. In the UK it seems you really know how to make the best use of your space. We should take some hints from you.

Love the little house in the back yard. Is that Millie's home?

what is your soil type? clay? Wow, if only I had a garden that big!

Millie lives with us. The shed is for the tractor and garden supplies. Our soil is sandy, rocky and without any life on it. The man who owned the property before the house was built sold off all the topsoil.

that's a crime, selling off the top soil.

Ornamental grasses, eryngiums, and wild flower meadow scheme will save on tractor fuel but provide places for the bears and wolves to hide

I'm sure the bear will love you. Lol. Good thoughts. I'll just have to get a jack hammer and backhoe to get the soil ready. A good excuse to build lots of aviaries . We can save fuel by having lots of birds and no grass!

You don't need to break up the earth to build a meadow garden. Just spread seeds and let it grow. Meadow flowers favour poor soils. Have a look at this...

http://wwww.rhs.org.uk/Learning/Publications/pubs/garden0406/cornfield.htm

It might be too late to plant it now, but try it with a small section next year. You can kill and weaken a small section of grass by leaving something on it for a month or 2, then spread some meadow flower seeds in the bare patch. Dot around a few large ornamental grasses (you can also grow these from seeds).

It's all the rage over here. I've also seen some good examples in the States. One year pretty much all the Chelsea Flower show gardens were full of grass land planting. Every garden featured stipa gigantea and other large ornamental grasses. I like stipa tenuissima and there are some really nice pennisetum species.

I'd love to have a meadow garden myself as I think they can feel very relaxing and contemplative. Bit of a Zen like quality to them.

Fantastic QTpie. Looks wonderful and I love the snow!

Andoy next spring, I'll give it a go. We had one once, but it was too shady and had too sparse a growth of flowers. It looked more like a "weed bed" instead of a flower bed. Thanks for the link. At least now I'll have plenty of free fertilizer!

Wow your place looks lovely!
And your backyard is HUGH!! You could have a mini farm there lol